


To the Sea

by Theladydoor23



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Comfort, M/M, Stress, University Life, Visiting the Ocean, hand holding, little bit of a character study, small town, that suffocating feeling you get, to being surrounded by people all the time, when you move from a small town
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-04-09
Packaged: 2020-01-07 14:39:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18412688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theladydoor23/pseuds/Theladydoor23
Summary: No one had warned Dex about how suffocating city life could be.Or maybe they had. Maybe he had been too busy staring out the window on the long bus rides home from high school, earbuds blaring, to pay attention to any warning. He was too busy imaging a different life, a different future, blocking out the obnoxious voices of the kids on his bus. He endlessly tallied the days in his mind: the hours of work, of school, of days left until he would be somewhere new. He clenched his hands into fists and turned up the volume until the music washed over him. Until it was only him and the heavy beat in his ears.He had been so fixated on leaving, on the person he was going to be once he got there, he didn’t think about the Maine that he would bring with him. ‘Rural Maine’ he would tell people when they asked. A small town, you wouldn’t have heard of it. There was a certain loneliness to finding your hometown—once, the centre of your universe—reduced to an unknown.





	To the Sea

No one had warned Dex about how suffocating city life could be.

Or maybe they had. Maybe he had been too busy staring out the window on the long bus rides home from high school, earbuds blaring, to pay attention to any warning. He was too busy imaging a different life, a different future, blocking out the obnoxious voices of the kids on his bus. He endlessly tallied the days in his mind: the hours of work, of school, of days left until he would be somewhere new. He clenched his hands into fists and turned up the volume until the music washed over him. Until it was only him and the heavy beat in his ears. 

He had been so fixated on leaving, on the person he was going to be once he got there, he didn’t think about the Maine that he would bring with him. ‘Rural Maine’ he would tell people when they asked. A small town, you wouldn’t have heard of it. There was a certain loneliness to finding your hometown—once, the centre of your universe—reduced to an unknown. Part of him longed for people who knew him, knew him and his family. Knew the stupid shit he did in second grade. Who might stop him in the street and ask how his grandma was doing. And yet, he had spent so many years in that small town, longing to get out. He hated that he missed that life. He had come to Samwell to make a new start, to be someone new, to love…to forcefully wrangle a new narrative for himself, one away from the ocean. But no matter where he was, he was still Will. Still too quick to anger, too drawn in on himself. He still listened to the loud music, his hands still too quick to form into fists. 

He had fought his way to Samwell, and found himself confronted by fellow students brandishing high school degrees from fancy schools. Schools with uniforms and actual guidance counsellors who knew the ins and outs of the college application process. Nursey had gone to an arts high school. Dex hated the mention of IB or honours classes. He marched out of the room in fury as Nursey started lauding the merits of an IB degree, of the extra rigor that had prepared him for college, and gave him credits to get out of some of his first-year classes. Will walked back to his dorm room and slammed his fists into his pillow. 

They didn’t get it. There was one high school and that was it. The time taken on the bus, the time taken at after school jobs. The required classes taken by correspondence when the school didn’t have enough student interest to run them. He heard them talk about their fancy schools—or at least heard Nursey—and he felt small. And stupid. He gritted his teeth, bit down the tears and threw himself at his work with a vengeance. He could work hard and he would. He would catch up on the stuff not covered in old battered textbooks, back in that high school in rural Maine. He would show them. 

There was good things about Samwell though. From the minute he dropped his duffel on his dorm room floor he felt an overwhelming sense of rightness. When he skated at Faber, joined the others back at the Haus, he felt like he belonged. He had grown up hanging out with Tim, Ian and Cassie. He had done a bunch of stupid shit with them, and spent summer nights huddled around illegal campfires on the beach. They were part of him, whether he liked it or not. But they had become friends because they were the only ones there. For the first time it felt like he had friends that he had chosen. Friends that had willingly chosen him. And while they pissed him off sometimes (Nursey) or confused him (How was Bitty getting any school work done? Was it really necessary for Holster to sing that loud? How was Chowder able to seem so happy all the time?), they were his friends. 

It was the weeks leading up to exam season second semester when it first hit. The feeling of suffocation. That he had spent too long cramped up, bent over books, inside. He tried to take walks, but everywhere he went there was people. He wanted to be alone. Properly alone. Middle of the ocean with no other boats in sight—just an uncle or his Dad at the wheel—alone. The wind in his hair. He gritted his jaw and swore to himself he would never mention that thought to Nursey or Chowder. He did not need to spent the rest of his time at Samwell fending off chirps referring to him as ‘Ariel’. His red hair was bad enough without him offering them ammunition. So he dealt with it as best as he could, shouldered the weight and moved on. What was one more thing on top of the rest? 

But the feeling didn’t go away. He couldn’t sleep. He felt restless. The skyline was closing in on him. His skin felt tight. He needed something endless. Or somewhere quiet. He had four exams, two final coding projects and a presentation. 

He was going to scream. 

Nursey was going to say something stupid and he was going to overreact. There was so much he didn’t know. So many things he had taken for granted his entire life were crumbling around him and he wasn’t sure how to hold himself together. There hadn’t been gay kids or trans kids in his little town. Or Out ones at least. Everyone was white and almost everyone was related to him in some way. He was quickly realizing there was so much he didn’t know, so many new ways to put his foot in his mouth. He hated that he felt mad about this. It wasn’t the world’s fault—it wasn’t Nursey’s fault—that he had some catching up to do. 

The pressure built up until he found himself standing outside of Nursey’s dorm room, hating himself for what he was about to do. But there was no one else to ask. Exam season was a shit time to ask anyone to give up time. He didn’t dare ask one of the seniors to drive him somewhere isolated, and while he felt like they were friends, he didn’t feel like he knew them well enough to ask to borrow their car. Chowder didn’t have a car. That left Nursey. For all their squabbling and shouting, Dex had a feeling he would say yes. Dex just had to ask. 

He was still standing in front of the dorm room door, staring at the peeling paint and the paper sign declaring “Derek Nurse!!!” when Nursey opened the door. Dex almost fell over in his surprise. 

“Okay there Pointdexter?” asked Nursey, seemingly unsurprised to find Dex lurking outside his door like some kind of stalker.  
Dex grunted a response and quickly backed away. This was a bad idea, a very bad idea.  
“Hey. Are you okay?”  
Dex paused. He would say yes. He could shrug it off and go back to feeling stir crazy in his dorm room. He realized though, in that pause, hand half raised to push open the door to the stairs, that he didn’t want to say yes. He wanted to tell someone. He needed to tell someone.  
“Dex?”  
“No.”  
“What?”  
Dex took a deep breath, turning away from the door to face Nursey, “I’m not okay.”  
“Oh. Um…Can I help? Is there something I can do?”  
Dex’s hands balled around his jacket, twisting it, strangling it. “I need to get out of the city.”  
“This isn’t a city,” said Nursey, before catching himself. “Wait! No, I’m sorry. That was unfair.”  
Dex strangled a scream. “It’s fine, its nothing. I’m going to go.” He turned. He knew this was an idiotic idea.  
“Wait!”  
Dex slammed his weight into the door and started down the stairs, until a hand closed around his arm, drawing him up short.  
Dex turned to see Nursey. Standing in the stairwell, hand still on his arm. Nursey wasn’t wearing shoes.  
“Let me help. Us D-Men need to stick together.”  
Dex looked at that earnest face and felt the anger inside him deflate a little.  
“Fine.” He took a breath. “Thank you.”  
“So what brought you to my door during the middle of hell season?”  
“Do you think we could not do this in the stairwell of your res?” asked Dex, as two girls pushed by them.  
Nursey’s mouth quirked up into a smile and he nodded. A smile that faded when they returned to his dorm room to discover that Nursey, in his rush to catch Dex, had managed to forget his dorm room keys. And of course he didn’t have a roommate. Dex considered banging his head against the wall. All he wanted was a forest, or maybe some time by the ocean. He did not sign up for this. Nursey grabbed his hand and forced him down to the lobby, to get a new key. Dex was so startled by the sudden presence of Nursey’s hand in his, that he didn’t shake his hand free until they were waiting in line at the front desk. It was the second time that day that Nursey had grabbed him. Dex decided he would examine the emotions that were stirring up much later, when he was done dealing with this particular crisis. Preferably when he was alone. Sometime far, far in the future. 

 

It felt like ages for the student behind the desk to issue Nursey another key, her eye roll almost audible when Nursey informed her he needed yet another replacement key card. 

Finally—finally, they were back in Nursey’s room, and Nursey was sitting down on his bed and turning to Dex with a questioning look. Dex’s hands tightened into fists. He didn’t do this. He didn’t talk about his feelings. Pointdexter men buckled down and ploughed through their problems. Except he had tried that for months. And staying silent, letting this boil up inside him, clearly wasn’t working.  
“I—I’m feeling suffocated.”  
Nursey slowly nodded, encouraging him to continue.  
“I think I just need some time away from all of this? Being around people all the time?” Dex’s hands tightened into fists and loosened. It felt like he was dragging the words out of himself. But they needed to be said. He fixed his eyes on the purple-brown carpet of Nursey’s dorm room and forced himself to continue.  
“I want to borrow your car so I can go find a forest or a beach or something. I just need so time away from everything.”  
“Okay.” Said Nursey brightly.  
“Okay?”  
“Okay, let’s go.”  
Dex looked up from the carpet, confused.  
“I’m coming with you. I could use a break myself.”  
Dex didn’t know whether to be infuriated by this turn of events or secretly grateful. The resulting mix of emotions made his cheeks burn and his jaw clench, but he nodded. Nursey grinned.  
“Let me grab my jacket. Are you good to go?”  
Dex nodded. He still didn’t trust himself to speak. He followed Nursey mutely as Nursey led him down to the parking garage, and unlocked the shiny car, gesturing for Dex to get in.  
“So where to?” Nursey asked, fingers hovering over his phone, which he had just locked into place on his dashboard after opening the GPS app.  
Dex didn’t know what to say. Water. He thought about how in his hometown half the streets led down to the ocean, and ended in various piers and docks. All you had to do was start walking and you would hit water eventually.  
“The ocean.” He said, when Nursey fixed him with a look and Dex realized he had been too silent for too long.  
“Chill.” Said Nursey and started tapping away at his phone.  
“Thanks,” said Dex suddenly, before he lost the nerve.  
“No problem man. What are friends for? I got your back.” responded Nursey, a softness to his expression when he looked away from his phone to meet Dex’s eyes. “Gotta get my lobster boy back to the sea.”  
Dex glared, Nursey laughed at his own chirp and the soft moment was broken.  
A second later they were pulling out of the parking garage, following the directions of the voice off Nursey’s phone, Nursey having changed the robotic voice to the male British accent.  
Nursey put on a playlist, a bunch of hipster songs Dex had never heard before. But Dex was grateful for the music filling up the silence. He didn’t want to talk. Didn’t want to think about Nursey’s expression, when he told Dex he had his back. Dex fixed his gaze out of the car window and watched the dance of the telephone wires as they drove. 

“We’re here” said Nursey, unnecessarily, as they pulled into a little parking lot that opened up onto the ocean, empty on that cold early April day.  
They got out of the car, and walked together down to the water.  
Dex stopped a bit before the waves, and removed his shoes. Tucking his socks into his shoes, and rolling up his jeans, he continued on in bare feet, feeling the sand and little stones beneath his toes. He kept walking until the cold water was lapping around his ankles, freezing his feet. It was only then, staring out at the endless horizon, his feet slowly turning to frozen blocks, that Dex felt like he could properly breathe for the first time in months. 

He stood there until he couldn’t feel his feet. Only then did he head back to the sand, to Nursey who was still standing where Dex had left him, hands shoved in the pockets of his puffer vest. Nursey looked more relaxed, head dipped back to weak warm rays of the sun. Maybe this trip hadn’t just been for Dex. 

Dex walked up to Nursey, who opened his eyes. “Feeling better?” Nursey asked.  
“Yes.” Nodded Dex, sitting down on the sand to pull his socks and shoes back on. After a second, Nursey collapsed down beside him. They sat together and watched the waves crash.  
Dex didn’t know how long they sat. This beach wasn’t like his beach at home. The landscape was different, the grit of pebbles and sand felt different under his feet. But the sea salt and seaweed smell, the wind that swept over him, felt familiar. 

Dex reached out and pulled on Nursey’s arm. Nursey looked at him confused. Dex continued to pull until Nursey’s hand was out of the pocket of the puffer jacket. Nursey seemed to understand what was happening now. With a soft smile on his lips, and a warm crinkle around his eyes, he took Dex’s waiting hand in his own. 

Dex turned back to the ocean, a smile on his face, his cheeks red with a blush and the raw sting of wind. For the first time in a very long time, everything felt right.

**Author's Note:**

> As I'm sure its overtly obvious, I'm not familiar with US geography. I did grow up in a small town in Canada, so I just transplanted some of my own thoughts/experiences about home, large bodies of water, and that sometimes awkward transition to university/larger cities/being around tons of people all the time.


End file.
